"But I bet that the morning, in the morning, we'll find us in bloom…"

Columbus Marathon Training – Week 11: Getting to the End

Woaaah, week 12 is done! The end is in sight. I say it every week, but I can’t believe how quickly this training cycle has been going. Now if we could just get some fall weather that would be great. We’ve had a few short previews of it, but I’m ready for it to settle in. That won’t be until the end of September, but it’s nice to know it’s coming. I don’t have much to report on this week, it was typical and uneventful. Work was super busy so I was pretty overwhelmed/stressed out all week.

This week started off with a late September-like day which was really nice. I had 6 tempo miles on Monday morning and it was great to not sweat like crazy during them. The best part was that my heart rate was great during those miles which gave me a lot of hope for when the cooler weather set in.

Saturday morning sunrise

By mid-week the heat was starting to come back, but it was still pleasant for my speed work. It went well, but it made me legs pretty fatigued through Friday. Because I was running the half marathon on Sunday, I only had 4 tempo miles on Saturday. I went down to the trail early to get them done with an out-and-back. On the way back I saw a bunch of pace groups from my running group which made the second half pretty fun.

After some stretching, breakfast, and a shower, I headed over to my coach’s house. He had DVRed the men’s Olympic Marathon so we could watch it and discuss some learnings. I was at strength class the morning of the marathon and had only seen the last 30-40 min so it was nice to be able to catch the whole thing and fast forward through the commercials. We discussed running tangents and he had drawn up some worksheets based on the marathon course to talk through running the tangents and give me some visuals to practice on. I struggle with tangents when there are a lot of turns so it was really nice to be able to visualize them and work through it ahead of time.

The half marathon Sunday was my long run. I did a one mile warm up so it totaled 14 miles for the day. This made it a cut back week of sorts, but I still hit 39 miles for the week. There was no taper for this race and it was hot, so it was a tough one. I’ll have a full recap coming up later in the week.

September is my last full month of training. It’s an intense month with the hardest work left to be done, but I feel ready to finish this training cycle strong and go into race day prepared. On the flip side I’m already starting to daydream about post-marathon life. I’m ready for some downtime and enjoying the off season. The marathon will be my final race of the year so I can give myself a break and have enough recovery time before beginning to get back into shape to train for the spring. I have so much to look forward to post-race, including the holiday’s, so I have no worries about getting the post-race blues. I’m planning a very different spring schedule than the past two years so that is something I’m already looking forward to with training. Until then, the marathon training continues!

One thought on “Columbus Marathon Training – Week 11: Getting to the End”

Dreaming of post-marathon life is almost as sweet as actual post-marathon life. Almost. I also like having holidays off from training, and the nice thing about having big goal races earlier in the fall is that it frees you up to relax and actually enjoy the peak of the season instead of just training through it. How adorable that you and your coach got together to watch marathon tapes and talk strategy. So old school!